Next: 1. MOTIVATIONS AND
In the Proceedings of the 10th Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Banff, Canada,
November 9-14, 1996.
Unification of Language Understanding,
Device Comprehension and Knowledge Acquisition
Ashok Goel
Kavi Mahesh
Justin Peterson
Kurt Eiselt
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280 USA
Contact: goel@cc.gatech.edu, 404-894-4994
Abstract:
Cognitive agents often acquire knowledge of how devices work
by reading a book. We describe a computational theory of
understanding a natural language description of a device,
comprehending how the device works, and acquiring a device model. The
theory posits a complex interplay between language, memory,
comprehension, problem-solving and learning faculties. Long-term
memory contains cases of previously encountered devices and associated
structure-behavior-function (SBF) models that explain how the known
device works. Language processing is both bottom-up and
top-down. Bottom-up processing is done through spreading-activation
networks, where the semantics of the nodes and links in the network
arises from the SBF ontology. The comprehension process constructs a
SBF model for the new device by adapting the known device models - we
call this process adaptive modeling. This multi-faculty computational
theory is instantiated in an operational computer system called KA
that (i) reads and understands English language descriptions of
devices from David Macaulay's popular science book The Way Things
Work, (ii) comprehends how the described device works, and (iii)
acquires a SBF model for the device.
Kavi Mahesh
Mon Sep 30 15:11:01 MDT 1996